Defending Equality in an Age of Democratic Decline

This report argues that the EU's Gender Equality Strategy 2020-2025 was conceived for a political moment that no longer exists. While the Strategy delivered important legal and institutional gains, notably on pay transparency, corporate boards, funding conditionality and EU accession to the Istanbul Convention, these advances were achieved largely through sustained political pressure, judicial intervention, and shifting national contexts rather than through the Strategy's own resilience. At the same time, the political environment deteriorated sharply. Gender equality moved from being a broadly accepted policy objective to becoming one of the most contested fault lines in Europe's democratic landscape. Organised anti-gender and anti-rights movements, increasingly coordinated across borders and amplified by digital platforms, have targeted women's rights, LGBTIQ+ people's rights and sexual and reproductive health as a means to undermine fundamental rights, polarise societies and weaken democratic institutions. The Strategy failed to anticipate this confrontation. Its silence on abortion, its limited operationalisation of intersectionality and its separation from the EU's democracy and security frameworks left the Union reactive rather than prepared.

Looking ahead, the report contends that the next Gender Equality Strategy must represent a decisive political shift. Gender equality can no longer be treated as a thematic social policy to be advanced through mainstreaming alone. It must be recognised and defended as a core pillar of democratic resilience. This requires the European Commission to act on clear democratic mandates, including the My Voice, My Choice European Citizens' Initiative and to explicitly integrate safe access to abortion and bodily autonomy into its equality framework. It also requires confronting the anti-rights movement head-on: through stronger enforcement of EU law, targeted funding for democratic civil society and robust application of the Digital Services Act, and the integration of gender equality into the Union's democracy, rule-of-law and security architecture, including its response to foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI). As guardian of the Treaties, the Commission has a responsibility not to dilute equality under political pressure but to strengthen it as a foundation of a resilient, rights-based European democracy.